Obscure

Chapter 15

Elias

Elias and Kirill sat in a small, drab room behind two-way glass. On the other side was an interrogation room identical to the one where he had spent the past few days. It made Elias wonder if anyone had been observing his sessions with Kirill from behind glass.

A man sat at the table. His hands weren't cuffed. He had dark, dark hair, and dark, dark eyes. There was a sharpness to his chin that looked all wrong to Elias—even at eight, Sammy had been all baby softness. But the solemn look in his eyes was as right as the angularity of his chin was wrong. Those were the same eyes that had stared into his soul when Sammy had been born.

The man was a man, not the boy Elias had lost. That shouldn't have been a shock. Elias knew he was in his early twenties, but he looked older. He looked like someone who had seen more than anyone his age should have seen—or anyone of any age. He looked haunted. He looked ageless.

Or maybe Elias was projecting, imagining everything Sammy had been through. Imagining the road from the soft little boy he had known to a dutiful tool of PERI, like was now.

Memories of Sammy poured from him in an endless stream. He couldn't stop them. He didn't try. He had other priorities. He drank in the sight of his son's face, gorging on him. This would be the last time Elias would ever see him.

And this moment might be the last moment Elias would see him without his face creased in pain.

He looked more like Kirill than he did like Elias. That hurt. But if he looked closely, he could still see the old softness and humor underneath those stern cheekbones and in the depths of those opaque eyes.

It made sense for Sammy to have grown into a face like that. His mother, Elias's first wife, had hidden her softness well too, and her humor. Most people hadn't seen them. But they were there.

Unless Elias was only seeing what he wanted to see. Unless he was trying desperately to convince himself there was still something of the boy he had known in this man. That he hadn't lost Sammy the way he had lost Max.

The more time he spent with Kirill, the more convinced he was that there was nothing of Max left in him.

Max would never have done what Kirill was about to do now.

The memories kept flowing, gushing as if from an open wound. Elias stood no chance. If Kirill asked him about his network now, it would all bleed out of him at once, a puddle of memory on the floor, leaving him drained and lifeless.

And the torture hadn't even started yet.

He breathed in. Breathed out. He tried to tell himself this man's face was the face of a stranger.

He knew better.

"Will you really sacrifice your child?" Kirill asked from the seat beside him.

Elias didn't take his eyes off the boy—no, the man—on the other side of the two-way glass. "There are a lot of people's children depending on me."

"I'll get the information regardless. You're leaking memories everywhere right now."

"Then why even threaten him?" Elias asked. "Why bring me here? You know you could have gotten it all just from saying his name."

Kirill didn't answer.

"Are you trying to prove a point with this?" Elias asked. "And if so, who are you trying to prove it to—me, or yourself?" For the first time since they had entered the room, Elias turned his head to look at Kirill. Kirill's face had regained its former blankness.

"This isn't about our history," said Kirill. "It's about practicalities. My superiors want results quickly. They're afraid your people will go to ground."